Аманда Хокинг - Torn

But he’d told me that Elora was my mother, which left me with an alliance to her, even if I did believe Oren.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“You need to know the truth. I know how fond of games Elora is.” Every time Oren said her name, it came out bitterly, as if it hurt to speak it. “If you have all the facts, it will be easy for you to make a decision.”

“And what decision is that?” I asked, but I thought I knew.

“The only decision that matters, of course.” His lips twitched with a strange smile.

“What kingdom you will rule.”

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to rule any kingdom.” I twisted a stray curl that had come loose from my hair tie.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Sara gestured to a chair behind me. After I sat, she took a seat nearer to the King.

“So…” I looked at her, smiling sadly at me. “You’re my stepmother?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Oh.” I sat in silence for a minute, taking it all in. “I don’t understand. Elora told me my father was dead.”

“Of course she did,” Oren laughed darkly. “If she told you about me, she’d have to give you a choice, and she knew you’d never choose her.”

“So how did you…” I floundered for the right word. “How exactly did the two of you… get together to… you know, conceive me?”

“We were married,” Oren said. “This was long before I married Sara, and it was a rather brief union.”

“You married Elora?” I asked and anger boiled up.

Initially, when he’d told me he was my father, I’d thought it was an illicit affair, like the one Elora had had with Finn’s father. I didn’t imagine that it’d be something of public record, something that every single person I’d met in Förening would’ve known about.

Including Finn. When he’d been going over the Trylle history, giving me a crash course on everything I needed to know about being a Princess, he’d failed to mention that my mother had been married to the Vittra King.

“Yes, briefly.” Oren emphasized how fleeting it had been. “We were wed because we thought it would be a good way to combine our respective kingdoms.

Vittra and Trylle have had their disagreements over the years, and we wanted to create peace. Unfortunately, your mother is the most impossible, irrational, horrible woman on the planet.” He smiled at me. “Well, you know. You’ve met her.”

“Yes, I’m aware of how impossible she can be.” I felt this strange urge to defend her, but I bit my tongue.

Elora had been cold, bordering on cruel at times, but for some reason, when Oren put her down, it offended me. But I nodded and smiled like I agreed completely.

“It’s amazing I even managed to conceive a child with her,” he said more to himself, and I cringed at the thought of it. I didn’t need to picture Oren and Elora being intimate. “Before you were even born, the marriage was over. Elora took you, hid you, and I’ve been searching for you all these years.”

“You did a horrible job of it,” I said, and his expression hardened. “You do realize that your trackers have beaten me up on three separate occasions. Your wife had to come in and heal me so I didn’t die.”

“I am terribly sorry about that, and Kyra is being dealt with,” Oren said, but he didn’t sound apologetic. His words were hard and angry, but I hoped that was directed more at Kyra than me. “But you wouldn’t have died.”

“How do you know that?” I asked sharply.

“Call it a King’s intuition,” Oren answered vaguely. I would’ve pressed further, but he continued, “I don’t expect you to greet us with open arms. I know Elora’s already had a chance to brainwash you, but I’d like you to take a few days to get to know our kingdom before making a decision to rule here.”

“And what if I decide not to stay here?” I asked, meeting his eyes evenly.

“Look around our kingdom first,” Oren suggested. He smiled, but the edge to his voice was unmistakable.

“Let my friends go,” I blurted out. That had been my motivation for speaking to him in the first place, but all this talk of parentage had gotten me sidetracked.

“I’d rather not,” he said with that same weird smile.

“I won’t stay here if you don’t let them go,” I said as firmly as I could.

“No, you won’t leave if they’re here.” The gravel in his voice made his words carry greater severity. “They’re insurance, so I can be sure that you take my offer very seriously.”

He smiled at me, as if that would counteract the veiled threat, but the wicked edge to his smile made it worse somehow. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I was finding it harder to believe this man was my father.

“I promise you, I won’t go anywhere.” I struggled to hide the tremor in my voice.

“If you let them go, I will stay as long you want.”

“I’ll let them go when I believe you,” he countered reasonably. I swallowed hard, trying to think of another way to barter. “Who are these people that have you have such concern for?”

“Um…” I considered lying to him, but he already knew I cared for them. “It’s my brother, er my… host brother or whatever, Matt, and my mänsklig, Rhys.”

“They’re still doing that practice?” Oren raised a disapproving eyebrow. “Elora absolutely despises change. She refuses to break from tradition, so this shouldn’t come as a shock. But it’s so outdated.”

“What?” I asked.

“The whole mänsklig business. It’s a total waste of resources.” Oren gave a dismissive wave at the whole idea of it.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you do with the baby you take when you leave a changeling?” When a baby is left, then another baby has to be taken.

“We don’t take a baby,” he said. My stomach twisted when I imagined them killing an infant, the way I had once feared the Trylle did. “We simply leave them behind, at human hospitals or orphanages. It’s none of our concern what happens to them.”

“Why don’t Trylle do that?” I asked. Once he said it, it made sense, and I wondered why everyone didn’t do that. It would be easier and cheaper.

“They think it gives them a bargaining chip. If the changeling decides not to come back, they have their offspring so they can milk money out of the host family.” He shook his head, as if he thought nothing of it. “We don’t need to hold their children hostage.”

“I see,” I said dryly. Oren apparently didn’t realize the irony of his statement, in that he was holding hostages himself.

“It’s a moot point, anyway,” Oren exhaled deeply. “We rarely even practice changelings anymore.”

“Really?” I asked. For the first time since I’d met him, I might actually agree with him about something.

“Changelings can get hurt, lost, or simply refuse us,” Oren said. “It’s a waste of a child, and it’s killing our lineage. We’re far more powerful than the humans. If we want something, we can take it. We don’t need to risk our progeny in their clumsy hands.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t sure that it was much better than Elora’s. She worked more of a con job, and Oren proposed outright theft.

“She was unwilling to change the old ways.” His face grew darker when he spoke of her. “She was so set on keeping the humans and trolls separate that she made their lives irrevocably tied, but she couldn’t see the hypocrisy of it. She saw it as nothing more than having your children raised by nannies.”

“It’s entirely different,” I said.

I thought of my childhood, to my host mother that had tried to kill me, and to my bond with Matt. I couldn’t imagine any nanny taking care of a child in the same way.